I cannot take this.Ruby Dee, dead, at 91?She and her hubby Ossie Davis lived in New Rochelle, not far from where I lived and closer to Jan Peerce, Walter and Jean Kerr and Iona College, from which I graduated.I met and interviewed them many times throughout the years, always asking about Diana Sands and always asking about Dorothy Dandridge. They were always shocked that as a young white "kid" I knew Diana and Dorothy and their tragic demises. Ossie hugged me when I told him I often visited Diana's grave. Many know Ruby starred with Sidney Poitier and Diana Sands in the 1961 gen A Raisin in the Sun, but few know that Streisand Sands began their career together. They were also involved with the civil rights movement; the couple were master and mistress of ceremonies at the 1963 March on Washingon, and she was friends with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. (Whose grave is quite close to Sands'.)Ossie was nicer than Ruby, though I gave her points for having my mother’s name, and I love their son, blues musician Guy Davis.The very first time I saw Ossie and Ruby perform was in a two-person show at SUNY Purchase (NY) in the '80s. They walked on stage, she paused and in a loud, demanding voice, uttered: “I is a nigger!”It was a shocking start to a fascinating and disturbing and riveting evening of everything that touched she and Ossie. She said: "As an actor, I want to explore life and people rhythms and the sounds in the silences."I cry in this silence.Please pray for her . . . and what she put up with. (Ossie loved to fuck around on her she allowed it).Then they wrote a book about it.First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted that she was "deeply saddened" by Dee's death. "I'll never forget seeing her in Do the Right Thing on my first date with Barack."Michelle tweeted the right thing.

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Alan W. Petrucelli has always been fascinated by dead celebrities. His first professional byline article was the 1980 obituary of David Janssen that he wrote for Photoplay. Since then, Alan has traveled the world, looking for the rich, (in)famous and dead, leaving prayers and, in the Jewish parts of town, stones. In his latest book, Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Rich and Infamous, he unearths the most disturbing, unexpected, occasionally humorous and often outright appalling details of the final moments of the rich and powerful.